Mayer Brings Some Google to Yahoo, Including Free Lunch

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Apparently there is such a thing as a free lunch - at the Yahoo headquarters, anyway.

Last week, new CEO Marissa Mayer announced a slew of changes to the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company, including a weekly hands-on meeting, and complimentary chow.

The food at Yahoo's Silicon Valley URLs Café will be available to employees at no cost  a philosophy that Google has lived by for years, according to All Things D, which first reported the company's changes.

The news outlet also pointed out that the Friday afternoon staff meetings, as well as rumored changes to the building's layout and upgraded merchandise in its stores, are ideas Mayer carried with her from Mountain View to Sunnyvale.

"It might be just a small thing, but people are thrilled," one Yahoo worker told ATD.

Still, Mayer is focused on the proverbial carrot dangling in front of the company, and that vegetable won't come free.

The former Google boss is pushing innovation among all of Yahoo's products  email, Flickr, search, ad serving, according to ATD's Kara Swisher, who quoted an unidentified source who called the changes "the sound of Yahoo becoming a technology company again."

Yahoo did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In her first week at the company, Mayer addressed her new staff with a memo encouraging them to "keep moving" and to continue doing "important work."

Stephanie began as a PCMag reporter in May 2012. She moved to New York City from Frederick, Md., where she worked for four years as a multimedia reporter at the second-largest daily newspaper in Maryland. She interned at Baltimore magazine and graduated from Indiana University of Pennsylvania (in the town of Indiana, in the state of Pennsylvania) with a degree in journalism and mass communications.
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